Friday, 18 September 2009

Did You Know 4.0? Visualising data using video

The original 'Shift Happens' presentation by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman was turned into a video and uploaded to YouTube in June 2007:

This was then remixed and set over a Fat Boy Slim soundtrack. A major YouTube hit, 'Did You Know?' has attracted over 6.5m views:

A new / updated version of the Did You Know film - Did You Know 4.0? - has now been created for the Economist's Media Convergence forum in October (more details on the film here):

However, a rival version / parody has been created by Darren Bachynski and Jared Bachynski that they are also calling 'Did You Know 4.0?':

but as they admit at the end of their version of 'Did You Know 4.0?':

I love the Did You Know style for presenting facts and figures (and you can clearly see the influence on other films like the recent Social Media Revolution video) - but the parody version gives a valuable lesson in internet objectivity. Just because something has nice graphics and energetic music it doesn't mean it's true, credits, citations and fact checking are vital!